LAND OFFICE REGULATIONS.

NATURE AND EXTENT OF MINING CLAIMS.

1. Mining claims are of two distinct classes: Lode claims and placers.

Lode Claims.

2. The status of lode claims located or patented previous to the 10th day of May, 1872, is not changed with regard to their extent along the lode or width of surface; but the claim is enlarged, by sections 2322 and 2328, by investing the locator, his heirs or assigns, with the right to follow, upon the conditions stated therein, all veins, lodes or ledges, the top or apex of which lies inside of the surface lines of his claim.

3. It is to be distinctly understood, however, that the law limits the possessory right to veins, lodes, or ledges, other than the one named in the original location, to such as were not adversely claimed on May 10, 1872, and that, where such other vein or ledge was so adversely claimed at that date, the right of the party so adversely claiming is in no way im paired by the provisions of the Revised Statutes.

4. From and after the 10th of May, 1872, any person who is a citizen of the United States, or who has declared his intention to become a citizen, may locate, record, and hold a mining claim of fifteen hundred linear feet along the course of any mineral vein or lode subject to location; or an association of persons, severally qualified as above, may make joint location of such claim of fifteen hundred feet, but in no event can a location of a vein or lode made after the 10th day of May, 1872, exceed fifteen hundred feet along the course thereof, whatever may be the number of persons composing the association.

5.

With regard to the extent of surface ground adjoining a vein or lode. and claimed for the convenient working thereof, the Revised Statutes provide that the lateral extent of locations of veins or lodes made after May 10, 1872, shall in no case exceed three hundred feet on each side of the middle of the vein at the surface, and that no such surface rights shall he limited by any mining regulations to less than twenty-five feet on each side of the middle of the vein at the surface except where adverse rights existing on the 10th of May, 1872, may render such limitation necessary; the end lines of such claims to be in all cases parallel to each other. Said lateral measurements cannot extend beyond three hundred feet on either side of the middle of the vein at the surface, or such distance as is allowed by local laws. For example: 400 feet cannot be taken on one side and 209 feet on the other. If, however, 300 feet on each side are allowed, and by reason of prior claims but 100 feet can be taken on one side, the locator will not be restricted to less than 300 feet on the other side; and when the locator does not determine by exploration where the middle of the vein at the surface is, his discovery shaft must be assumed to mark such point.

6. By the foregoing it will be perceived that no lode claim located after the 10th of May, 1872, can exceed a parallelogram fifteen hundred feet in length by six hundred feet in width, but whether surface ground of that width can be taken depends upon the local regulations or state or territorial laws in force in the several mining districts; and that no such local regulations or state or territorial laws shall limit a vein or lode claim

to less than fifteen hundred feet along the course thereof, whether the location is made by one or more persons, nor can surface rights be limited to less than fifty feet in width unless adverse claims existing on the 10th day of May, 1872, render such lateral limitation necessary.

7. Locators cannot exercise too much care in defining their locations at the outset, inasmuch as the law requires that all records of mining locations made subsequent to May 10, 1872, shall contain the name or names of the locators, the date of the location, and such a description of the claim or claims located, by reference to some natural object or permanent monument, as will identify the claim.

8. No claim shall be located until after the discovery of a vein or lode within the limits of the claim, the object of which provision is evidently to prevent the appropriation of presumed mineral ground for speculative purposes, to the exclusion of bona fide prospectors, before sufficient work has been done to determine whether a vein or lode really exists.

9. The claimant should, therefore, prior to locating his claim, unless the vein can be traced upon the surface, sink a shaft or run a tunnel or drift to a sufficient depth therein to discover and develop a mineral-bearing vein, lode or crevice; should determine, if possible, the general course of such vein in either direction from the point of discovery, by which direction he will be governed in marking the boundaries of his claim on the surface. His location notice should give the course and distance as nearly as practicable from the discovery shaft on the claim to some permanent, well known points or objects, such, for instance, as stone monuments, blazed trees, the confluence of streams, point of intersection of well known gulches, ravines or roads, prominent buttes, hills, etc., which may be in the immediate vicinity, and which will serve to perpetuate and fix the locus of the claim and render it susceptible of identification from the description thereof given in the record of locations in the district, and should be duly recorded.

10. In addition to the foregoing data, the claimant should state the names of adjoining claims, or, if none adjoin, the relative positions of the nearest claims; should drive a post or erect a monument of stones at each corner of his surface ground, and at the point of discovery or discovery shaft should fix a post, stake or board, upon which should be designated the name of the lode, the name or names of the locators, the number of feet claimed, and in which direction from the point of discovery, it being essential that the location notice filed for record, in addition to the foregoing description, should state whether the entire claim of fifteen hundred feet is taken on one side of the point of discovery, or whether it is partly upon one and partly upon the other side thereof, and in the latter case, how many feet are claimed upon each side of such discovery point.

11. The location notice must be filed for record in all respects as required by the state or territorial laws and local rules and regulations, if there be any.

12. In order to hold the possessory title to a mining claim located prior to May 10, 1872, the law requires that ten dollars shall be expended annually in labor or improvements for each one hundred feet in length along the vein or lode. In order to hold the possessory right to a location made since May 10, 1872, not less than one hundred dollars' worth of labor must be performed or improvements made thereon annually. Under the provisions of the act of congress approved January 22, 1880, the first annual expenditure becomes due and must be performed during the calendar year succeeding that in which the location was made. Where a number of contiguous claims are held in common, the aggregate expenditure that would be necessary to hold all the claims may be made upon any one claim. Cornering locations are held not to be contiguous.

2B & A48

13. Failure to make the expenditure or perform the labor required upon a location made before or since May 10, 1872, will subject a claim to relocation, unless the original locator, his heirs, assigns or legal representatives have resumed work after such failure and before relocation.

14. Annual expenditure is not required subsequent to entry, the date of issuing the patent certificates being the date contemplated by statute. 15. Upon the failure of any one of several co-owners to contribute hls proportion of the required expenditures, the co-owners, who have performed the labor or made the improvements as required, may, at the expiration of the year, give such delinquent co-owner personal notice in writing, or notice by publication in the newspaper published nearest the claim for at least once a week for ninety days; and if upon the expiration of ninety days after such notice in writing, or upon the expiration of one hundred and eighty days after the first newspaper publication of notice, the delinquent co-owner shall have failed to contribute his proportion to meet such expenditures or improvements, his interest in the claim by law passes to his co-owners who have made the expenditures or improvements as aforesaid. Where a claimant alleges ownership of a forfeited interest under the foregoing provision, the sworn statement of the publisher as to the facts of publication, giving dates and a printed copy of the notice published, should be furnished, and the claimant must swear that the delinquent co-owner failed to contribute his proper proportion within the period fixed by the statute.

Tunnels.

16. The effect of section 2323, Revised Statutes, is to give the proprietors of a mining tunnel run in good faith the possessory right to fifteen hundred feet of any blind lodes cut, discovered, or intersected by such tunnel, which were not previously known to exist, within three thousand feet from the face or point of commencement of such tunnel, and to prohibit other parties, after the commencement of the tunnel, from prospecting for and making locations of lodes on the line thereof and within said distance of three thousand feet, unless such lodes appear upon the surface or were previously known to exist. The term "face,” as used in said section, is construed and held to mean the first working face formed in the tunnel, and to signify the point at which the tunnel actually enters cover; it being from this point that the three thousand feet are to be counted upon which prospecting is prohibited as aforesaid.

17. To avail themselves of the benefits of this provision of law, the proprietors of a mining tunnel will be required, at the time they enter cover as aforesaid, to give proper notice of their tunnel location by erecting a substantial post, board or monument at the face or point of commencement thereof, upon which should be posted a good and sufficient notice, giving the names of the parties or company claiming the tunnel right, the actual or proposed course or direction of the tunnel, the height and width thereof, and the course and distance from such face or point of commencement to some permanent well known objects in the vicinity by which to fix and determine the locus in manner heretofore set forth applicable to locations of veins or lodes, and at the time of posting such notice they shall, in order that miners or prospectors may be enabled to determine whether or not they are within the lines of the tunnel, establish the boundary lines thereof, by stakes or monuments placed along such lines at proper intervals, to the terminus of the three thousand feet from the face or point of commencement of the tunnel, and the lines so marked will define and govern as to specific boundaries within which prospecting for lodes not previously known to exist is prohibited while work on the tunnel is being prosecuted with reasonable diligence.

18. A full and correct copy of such notice of location defining the tunnel claim must be filed for record with the mining recorder of the district, to which notice must be attached the sworn statement or declaration of the owners, claimants or projectors of such tunnel, setting forth the facts in the case; stating the amount expended by themselves and their predecessors in interest in prosecuting work thereon; the extent of the work performed, and that it is bona fide their intention to prosecute work on the tunnel so located and described with reasonable diligence for the development of a vein or lode, or for the discovery of mines, or both, as the case may be. This notice of location must be duly recorded, and, with the said sworn statement attached, kept on the recorder's files for future reference.

Placer Claims.

19. But one discovery of mineral is required to support a placer location, whether it be of twenty acres by an individual, or of one hundred and sixty acres or less by an association of persons.

20. The act of August 4, 1892, extends the mineral-land laws so as to bring lands chiefly valuable for building stone within the provisions of said law by authorizing a placer entry of such lands. Registers and receivers should make a reference to said act on the entry papers in the case of all placer entries made for lands containing stone chiefly valuable for building purposes. Lands reserved for the benefit of public schools or donated to any state are not subject to entry under said act.

21. The act of February 11, 1897, provides for the location and entry of public lands chiefly valuable for petroleum or other mineral oils, and entries of that nature made prior to the passage of said act are to be considered as though made thereunder.

22. By section 2330 authority is given for subdividing forty-acre legal subdivisions into ten-acre tracts. These ten-acre tracts should be considered and dealt with as legal subdivisions, and an applicant having a placer claim which conforms to one or more of such ten-acre tracts, contiguous in case of two or more tracts, may make entry thereof, after the usual proceedings, without further survey or plat.

23.

(Omitted.)

24. A ten-acre subdivision may be described, for instance if situated in the extreme northeast of the section, as the "NE. 4 of the NE. 4 of the NE. 4" of the section, or, in like manner, by appropriate terms, wherever situated; but, in addition to this description, the notice must give all the other data required in a mineral application, by which parties may be put on inquiry as to the land sought to be patented. The proofs submitted with applications must show clearly the character and extent of the inprovements upon the premises.

25. The proof of improvements must show their value to be not less than five huundred dollars and that they were made by the applicant for patent or his grantors. This proof should consist of the affidavit of two or more disinterested witnesses. The annual expenditure to the amount of $100, required by section 2324, Revised Statutes, must be made upon placer as well as lode locations.

26. Applicants for patent to a placer claim, who are also in possession of a known vein or lode included therein, must state in their application that the placer includes such vein or lode. The published and posted notices must also include such statement. If veins or lodes lying within a placer location are owned by other parties, the fact should be distinctly stated in the application for patent and in all the notices. But in all cases. whether the lode is claimed or excluded, it must be surveyed and marked upon the plat, the field notes and plat giving the area of the lode claim

or claims and the area of the placer separately. An application which omits to claim such known vein or lode must be construed as a conclusive declaration that the applicant has no right of possession to the vein or lode. Where there is no known lode or vein, the fact must appear by the affidavit of two or more witnesses.

27. By section 2330 it is declared that no location of a placer claim, made after July 9, 1870, shall exceed one hundred and sixty acres for any one person or association of persons, which location shall conform to the United States surveys.

28. Section 2331 provides that all placer-mining claims located after May 10, 1872, shall conform as nearly as practicable with the United States system of public land surveys and the rectangular subdivisions of such surveys, and such locations shall not include more than twenty acres for each individual claimant.

29. The foregoing provisions of law are construed to mean that after the 9th day of July, 1870, no location of a placer claim can be made to exceed one hundred and sixty acres, whatever may be the number of locators associated together, or whatever the local regulations of the district may allow; and that from and after May 10, 1872, no location can exceed twenty acres for each individual participating therein; that is, a location by two persons cannot exceed forty acres, and one by three persons cannot exceed sixty acres.

30. The regulations hereinbefore given as to the manner of marking locations on the ground, and placing the same on record, must be observed in the case of placer locations so far as the same are applicable, the law requiring, however, that all placer mining claims located after May 10, 1872, shall conform as near as practicable with the United States system of public land surveys and the rectangular subdivisions of such surveys, whether the locations are upon surveyed or unsurveyed lands.

Conformity to the public land surveys and the rectangular subdivisions thereof will not be required where compliance with such requirement would necessitate the placing of the lines thereof upon other prior located claims or where the claim is surrounded by prior locations.

Where a placer location by one or two persons can be entirely included within a square forty-acre tract, by three or four persons within two square forty-acre tracts placed end to end, by five or six persons within three square forty-acre tracts and by seven or eight persons within four square forty-acre tracts, such locations will be regarded as within the requirements where strict conformity is impracticable.

Whether a placer location conforms reasonably with the legal subdivisions of the public surveys is a question of fact to be determined in each case and no location will be passed to patent without satisfactory evidence in this regard. Claimants should bear in mind that it is the policy of the government to have all entries, whether of agricultural or mineral lands, as compact and regular in form as reasonably practicable, and that it will not permit or sanction entries or locations which cut the public domain into long narrow strips or grossly irregular or fantastically shaped tracts. (Snow Flake Fraction Placer, 37 L. D. 250.)

Regulations Under Saline Act.

31. Under the act approved January 31, 1901, extending the mining laws to saline lands, the provisions of the law relating to placer-mining claims are extended to all states and territories and the District of Alaska, so as to permit the location and purchase thereunder of all unoccupied public lands containing salt springs, or deposits of salt in any form, and chiefly valuable therefor, with the proviso "That the same person shall not locate or enter more than one claim hereunder."